I've also done some tweaking to the propulsion line. All the AIValues were still set at 10. I've taken the values from APT2.0 and I'll run a few tests.

Minor update. Some lines still had their AI value set to all 10. I have adressed this. The Yor now run AIP11.

TechTree.XML

StarRep
AI 10 to 20

StarDem
AI 10 to 30

NewPropulsion
AI 10 to 15

Ion Drive
AI 10 to 20

ImpulseDrive
AI 10 to 30

Impulse Drive Mark II
AI 10 to 12

Impulse Drive Mark III
AI 10 to 12

Warp Drive
AI 10 to 30

Warp Drive II
AI 10 to 4 

CollectiveManufacturing2
AI 10 to 20

No feature lockdown, it makes no sense. Too much is still bringing worked on.

Also I am too inexperienced to change the hardcoded data, it would take SD a hour to download the tools like I did and change it (like the AI building to many farms), instead one last plea to anyone who knows dll files and more C++ then me??!?! Its not working out for me. :/

Mabus, that is brilliant!!!!!

Why not add a cost to mining asteroids?

Altarians have to much luck, with the bonus, the political party, the 20% from techs and 50% from tech victory gives them 120%!

Overall the patch is awesome, sad I keep having to start a new game...but then again I was losing. :3

DARCA

Minior update.

TechTree.XML

Advanced Hulls
AI 30 to 32. This nudges the AI into hull tech right from the start and it will grab MediumScaleBuilding soon after. Cost wise it's 1500 TP which is about as much as PI. More on this later

MediumScaleBuilding
AI 30 to 40.

Basic Logistics
AI 30 to 32. Gives them just that little nudge for the AI to start researchign logistics.

In my current build AI's get frigates pretty quickly. The question is. Should they? Hulls were my biggest issue in APT2.0 because there's just no way to trigger them. In the end I left Advanced Hulls sitting on 30 and left it to a roll of the die. However, AIP8 also seems more keen to research hulls with this setup and I do believe this is a good thing.

AIP8 TechTrees

InterstellarConstruction
AI set to -10. A hack that causes both AI's to research this very quickly.

I like how it's shaping up, now I just want to get AIP8 to research logistics since I value it over Miniaturization and they're already researching their engines rather well. 

@DARCA Start in cheat mode and reveal the map with Ctrl+U.  I find it helps with getting through the early game.  Also, if the AI can challenge a player who can see where all the planets and resources are, then it must be doing well.

@MabusAltarn Looking good!  Like I said in my last post, I was being put in my place by the Torians who had in fact researched logistics, as evidenced by their fleets of heavy fighters.  I'm not at my desktop right now but I think that the route they take to logistics is a bit different?  That could have something to do with it, I dunno.

And yes, getting to Medium Hulls is a good goal for the AI to aim for.  Even with very basic weapons, they can pose a significant threat once there's enough logistics to fleet them up.  Against races which don't yet have frigates, they are pretty decent right up until the point where they are badly outnumbered.  They're also the first hull in the game which can make effective use of defences, so there's that too.

I've run a few test games with the new values for the Yor, and the research is mostly good. However, there are still a few issues. The AI sometimes researches Efficiency Studies and better Collectives way too late (2nd or 3rd year). Charging Stalks, on the other hand, are almost always neglected, or simply not researched at all. This is pretty bad, because the Yor economy relies on high population.

The worst part, however, is the way AIP 11 handles approval and the tax rate:

This is pretty much how every single one of my test games went. The way AIP 11 sets the tax rate and builds morale improvements prevents the population from growing. This cripples the Yor economy, because they have no other way to increase their income (at least not without tech trading), which cause them to not have enough money to fund all of their production. This makes them much weaker than they could be.

I know, that the Yor can make enough money to fund all of their production, and then some. They just can't in the hands of AIP 11. 

@Marv.

Then it's settles. They'll get frigates sooner rather than later. The Torians run on AIP11 which research logistics. It's AIP8 that has difficulty with this.

@Gaunathor

My first Yor AIP11 was a little rough around the edges and I wasn't completely aware how their economy worked now. So, they need population and high morale. I think AIP11 needs different values for morale structures. I'll see what I can do.

I also have a few tricks I want to implement to get AIP8 to research logistics and miniaturization and someone needs to take a look at tech unlocked by Xeno Ethics. The AIValues are all set at 10.

Minor update.

I'm rethinking the Yor. I've made a few adjustments to great effect. I've toned down the food bonus on their stalks a little which does wonders for morale and is what AIP11 needs. Oh and it's making money, running it's industry at 100% and taxes set at 70%.

Looking good.

It does, but that doesn't help terraformed low-PQ worlds. AIP 11 just won't build morale improvements on them, no matter what.

Actually, AIP 8 did go after those techs in my test games.

Toned down? The food bonuses of the Stalks are specifically set so they increases food by 1mt, 2mt, and 3mt. Reducing them would mean that you require two Stalks before you get an increase in food. To be honest, I'd rather increase the morale bonus instead. Going from 10%, 20%, 30%, to 15%, 25%, 40%.

Well, speaking of "toned down", I did exactly that with the Defense Stations SB modules. The AI had a bit of a hard time cracking them. Instead, I've increased the HP of SBs to 150. That should increase the SBs survivability against the big guns later in the game.

I've also set the Starbase Militarization techs to Defenses/Starbase, and the AI doesn't research them at all. That's not the kind of "delay" I had in mind. Even increasing the AIValue to 30 didn't help. I'm considering to set Military Starbase Construction to Category Military again, with an AIValue of 5 for AIP 11, and 20 for AIP 8. Just so that the AI researches that one at least, and isn't wasting its time and money on building all the military SBs, for which it has no modules.

Here's a though. Add morale to their factories as well. 2 or 3% should do the trick and this will solve low morale on low PQ planets.

After all, wouldn't factories make machines happy?

The reason I toned down the food bonus was simple. Several high pop. worlds had low morale. Now the AI could have lowered the taxes but imo, running your empire between 70 and 79% taxation should be an end goal.

Getting there.

The Yor are all about efficiency. That makes them happy. However, adding a morale bonus to the Collectives doesn't sit right with me. The Collectives are already the best factories in the game. Plus, I don't know how the AI would react to that. If it will treat the Collectives as morale improvements (like it does the Charging Stalks), then that would make matters even worse. It's also pretty much guaranteed, that the AI will place the Collectives on approval bonus tiles, instead of the Stalks.

True, and the Yor can do that already. It's just the AI that has trouble with it.

Alright so no morale on factories. I'm not ready to give up just yet but maybe another race is a better fit for AIP11.

If I may give a suggestion. The Krynn could work on AIP11. Here's why.

They get a stupendous amount of morale bonus keeping them happy.
Influence is their bread and butter. People = Influence.
AIP11 loves biology which means. +pop and terraforming = more influence.

With a bit of tweaking we can force AIP11 to research the +influence tech as well. This will result in an AI race with a really, really large infuence sphere which might be interesting. 

Yes, that could work. You just have to keep the Krynn morale/influence improvements in mind. Those are 1pp.

The Iconians could be another possibility. AIP 11s love for biology plays right into their SA. The only problem is, once again, approval. However, now that I changed the morale bonus of  the Dream Conclaves back to its original value (and made a more powerful version as an upgrade), it should be easier to handle. Might be worth a try.

@Gaunathor

I like the Iconians and Krynn both as options. My experiments of the Yor are also yielding some interesting results. I got them to research their production, farms, and economy before they dive into their planetary improvement tree. 

Updated version available on Google Drive. I think they're better off now.

Changes are:

PlanetaryImprovements.XML

Collective 1 to 4
AI 20 to 10. They build enough this makes room for labs.

Stalks (both)
Set morale equal to food bonus. 15, 25, 40.

Research Matrix
AI 100 to 1000 

Yor TechTree

ArtificialGravity
ID set to Biology
AI set to 15

PlanetaryImprovements
AI set to 35

Terraforming levels 1&2
AI to 35

Xeno Biology
AI to 30

Xeno Medicine
AI to 30

Fertility Acceleration
AI to 25

Galactic Warfare
Removed Category Pure Research

Space Militarization
Removed Category Pure Research 

Research Centers
AI to 35. This makes sure they grab a spamable lab asap. 

TechTree.XML

Collective Manufacturing 2 & 3
AI to 100
Category to Pure Research. This change ensures they go nuts when they grab lvl 1. Level 4 is much more expensive and excluded from changes.

Computational Matrix
AI 20 to 50

Synthetic Ingenuity
AI 10 to 15

Efficiency Studies1
AI 20 to 31

The Yor now grind through their economy, farms, +pop and manufacturing. Sometimes they wait for a while getting farms lvl 2 but they usually get them. I've made sure they get their terraforming levels asap since better planets mean higher morale and more room for farms, etc. They run their economy on high taxes and their planetary morale can be anywhere between 50 and a 100.

Personally? These guys scare me now. As soon as their must have tech is gone it's hulls, weapons, logistics and miniaturization and weapons.

Give them a whirl and let me know what you all think.

Link

Been doing some work. I got the AIP8's to research 3 levels of Logistics, I'm giving up on miniaturization since AIP8 research weapons a lot they'll increase in power that way.

I've set the AI of basic logistics to -10 (hack, but works) for all AIP8 techtrees. Enhanced and Advanced are industry/pure research. It works wonderfully and is quite reliable.

Krynn
The Krynn will push out a lot more influence now.

Iconians
Will research their unique hulltech much sooner and much more reliably.

Korath
Grab their farms ASAP and focus more on production and larger hulls.

Drengin.
Grab their farms ASAP. Reduced the likelyhood they'll research their influence tech. They're drengin.

Torians
Looking good but they omit researching their super cheap +research tech. Testing with Pure research as category instead of research. We'll see.

Back to work.

New version out. I'm happy with it for the moment

AIP8 Logistics Fix

Basic Logistics
AI to -10

Enhanced Logistics
Category to Pure Research
ID to Industry 

Advanced Logistics
Category to Pure Research 
ID to Industry

This gets AIP8 to 3 levels of logistics without trouble. Because basic logistics is still Purple the entire group appears as normal. 

This fix was applied to great effect to all AIP8 techtrees. 

TechTree.XML

XenoMystesism
AI 15 to 20

XenoBrainWashing
AI 20 to 5. Not their thing.

LawsOfKrynn
AI 20 to 55

OrderOfKrynn
AI 20 to 55

TheWay
AI 20 to 55

InterstellarMissionaries
AI 10 to 55
Category Culture to Pure Research

KrynniacConversion
AI 10 to 55
Category Culture to Pure Research

KrynnianDisciples
AI 10 to 55
Category Culture to Pure Research

XenoIntimidation
AI 30 to 5 

IndustrialStarbaseConstruction
AI 10 to 15

OrganicMaterials
AI 20 to -10

OrganicHulls
AI 30 to -10

SelfheaingHulls
AI  30 to -10

XenoIndustrialTheory
AI 20 to 25

XenoFactoryConstruction
AI 20 to 25

ManufacturingCenters
AI 10 to 20

IndustrialSector
AI 10 to 5 to 10

Scientific Method Implementation
AI 25 to 35

Advanced Philosohy
Category Research to Pure Research

Greater Enlightenment
Category Research to Pure Research

Deep Level Trances
Category Research to Pure Research

Exceptional Conscienceness
Category Research to Pure Research

InvisibleHand
AI 20 to 55

WarProfiteering
AI 35 to -10

WellnessFalls
AI 30 to 35

DarkEnergyResearch
AI  30 to 35
Category Military to Pure Research. (This prevents research inflation... i think)

Krynn

StarFed
AI to 55

Xeno Farm Construction
AI to -10

Korath

InterstellarConstruction
AI to 120

AdvancedHulls
AI to 120

Medium Scale Building
AI to 120

Artificial Gravity
AI to 20

Xeno Engineering
AI to 20

SlavePits
AI to 55

SlaveCanyons
AI to 120

EnhancedSlavelings
AI to 120

ArtificialSlavelings
AI to 120

Xeno Farm Construction
AI to -10

Xeno Farm Construction II
AI to -10

SoilEnhancement
AI 10 removed

HabitatImprovement
AI 10 removed

Terraforming
AI 10 removed

Drengin

Xeno Farm Construction
AI to -10

Xeno Farm Construction II
AI to -10

Summary:

Krynn
Should be annoying neighbours. They don't militarize as quick as the other but any planet in their territory will be difficult to keep.

Korath
Still useless but at least they build up their planets better and they'll have some bigger ships to annoy you.

Iconians
Strong. Very strong.

Thalan
Meh. Thalans are hard to play so small wonder the AI has trouble too. They could really benefit from some +pop research and on occasion they do. If they grab enough planets they'll do well enough.

Drath
With some logistics under their belt they're doing much better. Once wars break out these guys will be dangerous.

Korx
Seem alright and do what they need to do.

Terran
As generic as they come. All they needed was logistics. What does set the Terrans apart in play style? (I'm tempted to make them go nuts in their propulsion tech).

Drengin
Wicket now. They'll get all they needed just fine.

Altarians
Seem to do well. They terraform properly and if they take the time to get into Xeno Mystesism they'll be well off.

Arceans
*Sigh*. Do alright I suppose but it's their lack of planets that kill them. Personally, I'd give them much more +PQ tech to really turn them into a "turtle" race with immense fortress planets.

Torians
Get their +research tech now and a bit more morale certainly didn't hurt.

Yor
It took a bit of doing but the Yor will generally get their farms and +pop tech before setting foot past Xeno Engineering.

All done. Have fun testing. 

The Drengin need those techs to offset the influence penalty from the Slave Pits. Otherwise, their planets are too easy to flip.

As far as I know, the rate of inflation depends on the tech-branch, not the category. Weapons are affected the most, Defenses the least, and everything else is somewhere in the middle. (Edit: Though we could change Dark Energy Research back to Industry. This would reduce inflation.)

I've tested your previous changes to the Yor, and they worked pretty well. However, I do have some complaints:

1. The Yor didn't research Collective Manufacturing IV, Manufacturing Vortex, and Distributed Energy Matrix. The former isn't that bad, because Superior Collectives are still great factories. The latter two, however, mean a big loss for the Yor. They not only miss the two buildings which put their production through the roof, but also lose out on their production-assist SB modules.

2. The Yor barely built any Collectives. Iconia and some of the high-PQ planets had one or two on them. XTR-17 and the other terraformed low-PQ worlds were full of them. All other planets didn't have any.

3. The way AIP 11 placed (or rather "not placed") the Charging Stalks. However, I don't think there is anything we can do about that.

I'm going to test your new changes now.

Edit:

Those AIValues are still in the Korath tech tree.

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 396

1. The Yor didn't research Collective Manufacturing IV, Manufacturing Vortex, and Distributed Energy Matrix. The former isn't that bad, because Superior Collectives are still great factories. The latter two, however, mean a big loss for the Yor. They not only miss the two buildings which put their production through the roof, but also lose out on their production-assist SB modules.

CM4 needs a higher AIValue I suppose to force them to finish research it, that or a different category. I forced them to get 1, 2 and 3 ASAP but level 4 is much more expensive. Side note. I did see them research it on occasion..

Manufacturing Vortex and Distributed Energy Matrix I didn't touch which is probably why they were ignored. Should be easy enough to fix. Probably Economy as a category will do the trick.

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 396

2. The Yor barely built any Collectives. Iconia and some of the high-PQ planets had one or two on them. XTR-17 and the other terraformed low-PQ worlds were full of them. All other planets didn't have any.

I think that's an AIP11 trick. It turns small words into factories and later terraforms them. I guess the Collective's need a bit higher AI than I gave them. Currently they're equal to the regular factories (AI = 10) which works well enough for the other AIP11 races. When I checked I noticed plenty of collectives so they didn't run short in production.

Maybe AIP11 is keeping a few spots open for economic strucutres. If that's true we have a problem since the Yor will never get those unless they techtrade.

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 396

3. The way AIP 11 placed (or rather "not placed") the Charging Stalks. However, I don't think there is anything we can do about that.

Probably not. The AI value is high enough as it is.

I'll sit tight for tonight until you're done testing.

Random thoughts:

How about we make a select number lot of unique tech stealable? 

Right now soooo much tech is untradable and for very good reasons but there's plenty to toy around with. Getting a tech through espionage is rare but getting something really awesome might make it interesting. 

Would be really be that bad to steal Weather Control? Mercenaries? Divergent Evolution? etc. It would make tech stealing a bit more interesting.

Just a thought though.

Something which popped into my head just now as a useful series of techs for the Yor (alas, we're feature locked there) would be something like 'Maintenance Grid Optimisation' for some small increments to the Morale ability.

They do get quite a bit of use out of their stalks, but one of the things I felt was missing when playing them was some way to boost morale civ-wide.  I guess I'll just have to look out for some morale resources next game.

P.S. Google drive looks cool what with showing the date and time modified on the file.  Not at my desktop yet so I'll check out the update in a bit.

I haven't looked at all of the races yet, but, so far, it's looking pretty good.

The Iconians were running rampant in my last test-game (actually in almost all of them).

The game took place on a large map, common everything, no events, 8 minors, and the Terrans, Drengin, Altarians, and Yor, as the other players. I don't know how, but the Iconians managed to grab 27 planets, even though they only had Basic Replicators for the first two years (they began researching Interstellar Refining at the start of 2229). Once they got their production going, however, they were unstoppable.

They first defeated the Drengin, who were their direct neighbour and had the 4th biggest empire (10 planets originally, but they managed to get the number up to 13 during the war). The war took surprisingly long. Almost two years of back and forth, with no side making big progress. Eventually, Lord Kona realised the futility of continuing the war, and surrendered to the Iconians.

Next up were the Altarians who had the second biggest empire (20 planets), and had been at war with the Yor (14 planets) for some time now. That war had already been going on before the Drengin-Iconian war started, and it could have been going for much longer. There were two reasons for this. The first was the distance between the Yor and the Altarians. Both were in the south of the map, but the Yor were in the western corner, the Altarians in the eastern one, and a huge gulf between them. The second reason was that, while the Altarians had the better weapons (Photon Torpedos against the Yor's Harpoons), the Yor had the stronger production and bigger hulls (large hulls vs the Altarian's medium hulls). Once the Iconians entered the mix, things changed. They were direct neighbours to the Altarians, and could easily attack the Altarian planets. Eleys Mue quickly realised this, and surrendered after only a few months of fighting. Also to the Iconians.

Now was the Terran's turn (11 planets). They pretty much had this coming, because they had been instigating most of the wars during this game. Paying one side to attack another, with no regard to who got hurt. They didn't put up much of a fight, and surrendered as soon they could.

The Yor were last on the chopping block, but I didn't stay to watch. It was obvious who was going to win. Almost the whole map was white at this point.

Now to the complaints.

The races seem to research logistics and bigger hulls way too soon. I mean, what good do Enhanced Logistics and Medium Scale Building do, when you have neither the weapons, nor the industry, to make use of them. I've seen races research them in 2227, when they should be focusing on expansion and on improving their economy.

The Yor. Their research is pretty good now. It's just too bad that AIP 11 keeps screwing up the rest. I actually rage-quit one test-game due to this.
In that game, the Yor barely managed to colonise five planets during the first year. There were six more, all within two sectors of Iconia, but the Yor were unable to make the necessary colony ships. They just didn't have enough population to fund the production. None of the colonies had even 1b people, and even the one with lowest population (about 86 million) had only an approval rating of 67%. The tax rate was just too high, preventing the population to grow, and the AI couldn't build Stalks, because it lacked the funding.
The research was also not that good during this game. They only managed get Computational Matrix, Collective Manufacturing I, Advanced Population Acceleration, and Efficiency Studies I-III during the whole year. The last three techs actually took them more than 30 weeks to research. That actually might have been worth it, if the population had been bigger. As it was, however, Spark of Life Enhancement and Charging Stalks would have been the better choice.
I couldn't take it anymore, once I saw the Thalan and Torians colonise those planets, even though they started several sectors away from the Yor.

I'm really sorry to keep on harping on this, but I just don't think that AIP 11 is fitting for the Yor. It just can't play them properly. AIP 8 might not be as good at research, but it can at least manage the rest (tax rate, approval, planetary improvements) pretty well.

As for my evaluation of the races I tested so far, I'd say the Terrans, Drengin, and Altarians, are doing okay. They all research the necessities well enough most of the time, though a few things can still be improved (like the aforementioned logistics and hull techs, for example). The Iconians are just plain awesome. They sometimes don't research Interstellar Refining as early as I'd like, but that doesn't stop them from winning the game. As for the Yor, I've said enough about them already.

http://postimg.org/image/il34vjah3/

Disgusting. Yor riuned my game, so i let the ai play agnst it self after 30 turns and it got WAY worse.

I let the Ai play against itself to test out some super dread lords and as you can see it was a nightmare. they made 100,000 credits a turn!!! and had weapons way faster than anyone, but didnot declare war on any major races. I played on immence maps, challenging difficulty.

The yor are swallowing up wholeEmpires, mine WAS at the top and so was the Arcean (they always suck) and the altarian (the always suck).  the Torian were late bloomers with there colony rush and had about 50+ colony ships with no were to go but usually do "ok". The same with the thalan, sometimes they are good like the Yor but have alot of colony ships going nowhere. the terran are constantly worst, before this patch they had a ok colony rush, now they are the smallest empire and suck at everything. the kyrnn are always good but not great. the drengin are good actually and sometimes are as big as the Yor.

Tone down the Yor, they are way OP, there colony rush was big and fast and 5x worse than my screen shot at its worse. Help the terran and arcean and altarian. they need help the most right now.

(orry for spelling errors, cant use backspace or space bar without erasing words next to it.)

DARCA

And the iconians are doing good, most of the time apart the yor over shadowing everyone. lol

(Hmmm...text works properly on this post and does not overlap, must be a issue with the site?)